"building blocks.dotx is locked for editing" - what does this mean?

0

I started up a networked office computer (VDI) I don't usually use and, while it was finishing booting up and opening Outlook, it popped up this message:

building blocks.dotx is locked for editing by [my username]

I've never heard of that file before. Searching around on bing it looks like it might be associated with some plugin for MS Word that is in some way associated with QuickBooks (QuickParts?), but there's not much clear information.

This also seems strange since a) I wasn't opening Word (the only software I had opened at the time was Outlook) and b) I've never used QuickBooks or anything related to it, and it doesn't even seem to be available to my network profile (I'm not even aware that anyone in our organisation uses it, althoug it's possible).

So,

  1. Does anyone know what this message means, and/or what building blocks.dotx is or does?
  2. Does anyone know what the implications are - under what circumstances building blocks.dotx being locked might become a problem?
  3. Is there anything that can/should be done about it?

user56reinstatemonica8

Posted 2013-04-12T11:08:28.687

Reputation: 3 946

1You searched? If you type in "building blocks.dotx locked for editing" into Google are you saying none of those are helpful? – Dave – 2013-04-12T11:46:50.820

I used Bing (maybe that's where I went wrong) and got precisely 13 results: some inconclusive forum threads relating to Quickbooks, a Microsoft support thread with nothing but an MS guy suggesting a different forum, a couple of unanswered or unrelated threads (e.g. people hitting the error while trying to do X in Word, and being suggested Word-specific workarounds), and a whole load of duplicates of the above I didn't open

– user56reinstatemonica8 – 2013-04-12T11:51:58.867

I also searched on just the filename, and the filename plus 'locked', and also a few searches like 'what is "building blocks.dotx"', but in all these I found nothing but troubleshooting pages for unrelated Word-specific problems or similar results to the above. Trying the search you suggested on google just gives me this question, then two pages of dupe threads all about someone called "Judity Swazey", none of which seem to have answers. – user56reinstatemonica8 – 2013-04-12T12:05:17.167

Mystery downvoter: is two whole comments describing prior research really not enough? Do you really want questions to be padded with tedious long paragraphs of "I searched for X but only found Y"? – user56reinstatemonica8 – 2013-04-12T12:38:58.067

Answers

3

Building Blocks and Quick Parts have no connection to QuickBooks. Looks like the template file is either locked by some app or possibly corrupted. In the latter case you can try generating a new copy. The reason you received the error with Outlook is because Outlook uses Word as both its rendering and composition engines.

Karan

Posted 2013-04-12T11:08:28.687

Reputation: 51 857

Asked: 2013-04-12T11:08:28.687

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Active: 2013-04-12T12:10:09.630